Freckle Launches a $199 Phone Built to Keep Kids Off Screens

Sam Terris is betting $199 plus $25 a month that parents will buy a phone designed to be used less. Today he launches Freckle, a phone for kids aged 7 to 13 with no web browser, no app store, no social media, and no YouTube. The device is available for preorder now and ships in December.

Freckle has received investment from Alexis Ohanian's Seven Seven Six. The startup enters a market primed by parental anxiety. A 2025 Harris Poll of 500 kids aged 8 to 12 found that 62% had never walked or biked anywhere without an adult. Last month, Meta agreed to pay up to $17 billion to settle claims from 51 states that argued it deliberately made its apps addictive to kids.

Terris is a serial entrepreneur who cofounded the plant-based nugget brand Nuggs. He recently had a baby, and he grew up roaming the woods around Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, inventing his own games with friends. "We were really bored kids, so we had to invent games and activities to keep ourselves stimulated," he says. "I think that was a really important part of development in my generation."

Terris doesn't believe technology is inherently bad for children. His diagnosis is narrower: social media and smartphones have been deliberately designed to addict users. Freckle is his counter-proposal — technology built to help kids develop independence, build relationships, and stay safe.

The device keeps communication inside a walled garden. Kids can call and text only the contacts their parents approve. Tracking lets parents follow their child on a map, or set up "safe zones" that trigger an alert if the child leaves them. "You could choose to track their every movement," Terris says, "but you could also just trust the product to alert you."

Built for Kids, Not Just Parents

Freckle is also made to be fun. The hardware is soft, colorful, and covered in tactile buttons, built around a small square touchscreen. A "Discovery Camera" identifies bugs, birds, and plants and adds them to a digital sticker book. "It sort of feels like Pokémon Go, but for real life," Terris says.

Parents can send "quests," such as finding five kinds of bugs at the park or photographing three Impressionist paintings at a museum. When two kids tap their Freckles together, they unlock a walkie-talkie mode. A tap-to-pay wallet lets parents load pocket money in case of an ice cream run.

The name is meant to conjure being outdoors in sunlight and coming home to find the day has left a trace on your skin. "There's this connotation of technology being indoors and isolating," Terris says. "But if it's carefully designed, it could be a really good facilitator of outdoor experience, and prosocial."

The Nonaddictive Design Problem

Terris had to wrestle with a hard question: how to make a device kids love without making one so engaging they can't put it down. A growing number of kids-tech companies are working on the same problem. Tonies recently teamed up with Hasbro to turn board games like Monopoly and Guess Who? into audio games for the screen-free Toniebox. Skylight's Buddy, a small device that helps kids get through daily routines, uses deliberately simple graphics that hold a child's attention just long enough to finish a task.

Terris's guiding principle: the device should always push the child toward the world beyond it. "We want it to always invite in a third party, whether that's another object, another person, your environment," he says. "It's never a portal to a digital realm."

A Crowded, Unproven Market

Freckle joins a growing wave of phones for children. Stripped-down smartphones like Gabb, Pinwheel, and Troomi leave out social media, web browsers, and app stores. The Bark Phone is a Samsung Galaxy that scans kids' messages for red flags and unlocks more features as they age. For younger kids at home, landline-style devices like Tin Can and Pinwheel Home connect only to parent-approved contacts.

It's still unclear which of these will catch on. Many parents end up choosing the iPhone because everyone already has one.

Terris wants to reach families before their kids get a smartphone. He admits most kids will eventually move on to an iPhone. His hope is that Freckle prepares them for it, so a 13-year-old can use that technology responsibly. He likens the approach to European parents who let their children have a little wine with meals. "This is like a little bit of wine at dinner," he says.